


Death Knelt Before Heda

by Ressick



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/F, Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-09
Updated: 2016-04-09
Packaged: 2018-06-01 03:25:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6498937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ressick/pseuds/Ressick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Yet another) 3x07 fix it.  Clarke is a healer, and she doesn't forget it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Death Knelt Before Heda

**Author's Note:**

> This wasn’t supposed to be the first Clexa fic I finished & posted but here we are. Also, I watched 3x07 all the way through once and I refuse to watch again so this might not line up perfectly with its narrative sequence. I don’t care.

The moment after the gun went off, Clarke could half-hear frantic shouting outside her door even as she scurried away from Titus and his murderous agenda. Lexa put Clarke in an area of the tower where she was surrounded by those most loyal to her, those who would watch over Wanheda when she was not there. Clarke could hear her neighbors send up the alarm even as she dodged bullets, could hear them scurrying for their own weapons before thudding down the hall towards her room.

 

Lexa was the first through the door, and time utterly _stopped_ when they all realize she was shot. Murphy worked his way free and took up a heavy candleabra in his bloody hands to smash it across the back of Titus’ head. Clarke barely noticed, instead leaping forward, and caught Lexa as she fell, eyes wide with pain.

 

The second person through the door was Clarke’s nearest neighbor, sword in hand and healer’s bag hastily slung over her shoulder. Teran gasped at the black blood bubbling up from Lexa’s gut, and immediately dropped her sword to shove a bandage over the wound.

 

“Wanheda!” she shouted, trying to stir Clarke out of her shock. “Klark! Get her on the bed!” After slapping Clarke out of her frozen state, the two women carefully maneuvered Lexa onto the thick furs. Neither of them noticed the flurry of activity behind them – the guards that rushed in, saw Titus bleeding from his head with a gun in his hand. They didn’t hear Murphy explain what happened, didn’t notice Titus being hauled from the room in shackles nor Murphy unloading the gun for them nor heard a flurry of shouts for more healers. They didn’t notice more supplies being brought in nor the other healers hovering behind them, one eventually moving to patch Murphy up for want of something to do.

 

Clarke took the lead, more familiar with bullet wounds. When Lexa started to squirm as she worked to remove the bullet, four hulking guards moved to hold their Commander down. She wished she had her mother’s equipment, wished even for the finer thread she’s used to using. But there was no heart monitor, no bag of blood to replace what Lexa had already bled onto the furs below her – she gasped, her mind whirling. “Get the Nightbloods. Get them here _now_!”

 

She vaguely registered the “Sha, Wanheda,” as a guard bolted down the hall towards the training grounds. She paused in her stitching, head bowed over Lexa’s abdomen, when a dozen sweaty children piled into the room.

 

“The Commander has been shot. By Titus. She’s lost a lot of blood. If she needs some, will you give it to her?” she asked without looking at them.

 

“Our blood is hers,” she heard from a shaky Aden followed by murmurs of agreement from the others.

 

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” she muttered to Teran, tying off the final stitch. “Because I don’t have anything to transfuse with.”

 

“I do. It is rarely done, and usually fails, but I have what is necessary,” Teran murmured back.

 

For the first time since Lexa was shot, Clarke looked up from her lover’s unconscious body. She took the thick paste used to fight infections from her neighbor and spread it generously across the wound, setting a clean bandage over top. “We should get ready to do it, just in case.”

 

Teran started ordering the other healers around, setting off a flurry of activity. Clarke’s mind idly translated the Trigedasleng, that Teran has asked for a large pot of water to be set to boil, for the Blood Kit to be brought from her room. Sterilization was a fraught objective for any healer on the ground, and Clarke already feared infection. In the first moments she hadn’t even thought to wash her hands before tending to Lexa. And while Teran had poured alcohol over the tweezers and needle she handed Clarke, it might have been too little too late.

 

Clarke shuddered at the thought that her fingers had been _inside_ Lexa only a half hour before. Inside her gut, fishing out a bullet, instead of the beautiful way she had been inside her lover the night before.

 

“Wanheda,” Teran knelt beside her, damp cloth extended. Clarke remained frozen, so Teran gently wiped both of her hands free of Lexa’s thick black blood, scrubbing carefully. She heard a quiet set of steps behind her.

 

“Death herself knelt before Heda,” Aden said, the tremor but also the absolute faith in his voice audible.

 

Clarke sobbed, because no one had seen Lexa kneel before _her_ , eyes shining bright with hope, offering herself, her fealty and her love and her life, up to the Commander of Death. But how could she tell the boy whom Lexa looked at with such open affection _that_? That his Commander had knelt before Death, a sacrifice and a promise?

 

Weeks in Polis had given her glimpses of what a younger Lexa must have looked like – all elbows and knobby knees and shining hope for a better future. Just as she’d seen Aden, his puppy-like always lurking at the corners of his mouth even as he took down warriors twice his size in training. The hard, impassive Commander façade cracking so easily around her Nightbloods, melting into the warm teacher. And what a future Clarke had learned lay before him – fighting to the death all his fellow Nightbloods to ascend a bloody throne. It was a tradition Lexa hated – found thoughtless and without foresight and a waste of a precious resource – but it was not one she was sure could be changed as long as Titus lived.

 

Titus. She growled at the thought of the man, and it snapped her from her frozen crouch at her lover’s side. Rising, her joints creaking at the stress, her clothes streaked with black blood, she stroked gently at Lexa’s pale cheek before turning to the rest of the room. All of the Nightbloods stood nearby, their swords drawn and faces solemn. A handful of fellow healers hovered still, as much to learn from her actions as to be available to assist. Guards crowded the doorway and hall, shifting restlessly. And Murphy, wounds cleaned up and bandaged. She turned to him first. “The gun?” He handed it to her, the clip already removed and the chamber empty. “Was that all you had? He doesn’t have anything else stolen off you stashed anywhere?”

 

He shook his head, blood-encrusted hair flopping around his eyes. “I never had any spare ammo. I think the rest of my stuff is in his creepy garbage room, or in his pockets.”

 

Clarke mulled that over, knowing the room had to be important despite Murphy’s flippant description, “Show me later.” He grunted his agreement.

 

“Where’s Titus?” she asked Aden, practically glowing with her rage.

 

“He has been chained, in the dungeon.” The boy shifted uncomfortably. “We have no other Fleimkepa. We must find all he knows before he is executed, or he would be dead already.”

 

She snorted, “What a way to make sure he was indispensible. Make sure he stays in that cell.”

 

“He tried to kill you, Wanheda, and injured Heda. He will never leave the tower alive,” Aden promised.

 

Clarke shook slightly from the knowledge that Lexa was hurt as part of an assassination attempt against her. “I hope you’re right, Aden,” she murmured. “Not all are as loyal to Heda as you.”

 

“My _houmon_ handpicked all the warriors guarding him,” Teran broke in. “She will not allow him to leave unless you bid it.”

 

She nodded, her mind whirling. All she wanted was to curl up with Lexa, watch every breath and feel every beat of her heart. And she had no real authority. With Lexa unconscious, and Titus a traitor, the chain of command seemed incredibly muddled. She breathed in, considering. When Lexa had been injured on the battlefield, years before, Anya had taken reign of the army briefly, she knew that. But Anya was dead.

 

“Someone needs to get Indra back to Polis. And make sure Octavia is safe to return with her,” she decided, glancing over at Aden. “Who would you send?”

 

“I would go myself, Wanheda,” he replied, chest puffed out.

 

“Heda needs you here,” she corrected gently, “all of you,” she glanced at the other Nightbloods.

 

“I shall go,” said a voice from the hall. A lithe redheaded woman shouldered her way past the other warriors, bow and quiver strapped to her back, her eyes alight with an anger easily recognized by all in the room – all those most loyal to Lexa. Clarke knew she was one of Lexa’s most trusted, often sent out as a messenger either on horseback or fading into the woods like a ghost. Clarke glanced to Aden, who nodded. “Mochof, Ris. Please hurry.”

 

“As you bid, Wanheda,” the other warriors parted easily for the tiny woman as she left.

 

She sighed. The tower was a sieve. Word of the attack, Lexa’s injury, and likely even Titus’s betrayal were probably already circulating Polis, not to mention heading back to the other clans. That she and Lexa had been able to keep their developing whatever-it-was so quiet over the past weeks was nothing short of a miracle. Clarke needed to _think_ , to plan. But her mind instead froze, overwhelmed and tired and heartsick.

 

~-~

 

Teran rose, disappearing into the bath to emerge with a clean shirt she coaxed Clarke into. The others turned away out of respect for Wanheda before Teran ushered them out. She closed the door, and let the mass of warriors and healers and black-blooded children arrange themselves in the hall. Lexa’s most loyal would stay close for as long as they were needed while Heda and Wanheda were in no position to take care of themselves. She shook her head at the bloodied furs on the bed but there was no way she’d dare try to move Heda at the moment. Instead, she grabbed clean blankets from the chest at the end of the bed and ushered Clarke into bed beside her lover. She tucked the mighty Wanheda in beside Lexa, politely ignoring the silent tears streaking down the Skaikru woman’s face.

 

She checked at her back for the long dagger she kept there and sunk to the floor, leaning against the bed, facing the door. All was in hand as well as it could be, and she would be the last line of defense in front of her Heda. She reorganized her healer’s bag and then set it aside. She yawned, and then ran a shaky hand over the scar by her shoulder. The arrow wound had almost taken her life when she had been a young gona, and it had been Heda’s compassion that brought her back to Polis, unable to move her arm fully, her fighting days over before they truly started. Instead Heda had introduced her to Costia, a healer’s apprentice, and Teran had found her calling.

 

She slid the dagger from its sheath and settled it across her lap. Checking the sun’s path in the sky, she reminded herself to wake Heda for a draught in a few hours. Until then, she’d let them sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> *cough* The two named OCs in this fic are Teran and Ris. Both are basically the Trikru Editions of other I-refuse-to-recognize-as-dead queer characters – Tara Maclay and Marissa Tasker. Just FYI. Couldn't resist.


End file.
